


Low Tide

by AeonDelirium



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, M/M, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 07:25:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2340014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeonDelirium/pseuds/AeonDelirium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ramsay Snow, Captain of the <i>Blood</i>, has made an extraordinary catch. And he knows just how to use it to his advantage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Low Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Lately I've been terribly busy and generally uninspired, so this is basically just a little ... _something_ to get back into it. Everyone does merpeople AUs these days it seems, and I figured why not.

The air was stale beneath the deck, where it had been breathed and smoked and breathed again countless times, where it was thick with man-stench, a foul aroma of musk and alcohol. It stuck to his hair and crept between his scales, and it seeped into his flesh, finding gaps and cracks where the skin had broken and where it had been cut. Theon felt filthy, like something dead left to dry and rot, attracting flies and rats and all other manner of vermin that gnawed and crawled in the darkness.  
 _Give him water_ , the Captain had said when they’d first drawn him from the depths, ropes around his neck and wrists and fins, _just enough to keep him alive._  
The ship swayed gently from side to side. It must have been a beautiful day outside, the sea stirred by a slight breeze, scraps of clouds drifting across a bright blue sky. Sometimes he thought he could hear a seagull, but perhaps that was just a dream. _If this is living_ , he thought dimly, stirring a cloud of flies with a weak flap of his tail, _I’d rather be dead._  
  
“I’m not going to let you die.”  
It still frightened him, how the man got into his head like that, almost as though the two-legged beasts possessed some kind of power or secret wisdom he could only guess at. Or perhaps he had simply become too readable, his mind too tired to keep his feelings under lock and key. All merpeople were proud by nature, but not him, not anymore. He wasn’t even a merman anymore. _A trout at best. Maybe a sea worm. An age-old mussel stuck to the hull of a ship._  
Just how long he had been stuck to the _Blood_ , or rather, its Captain, he could not have said. Time passed differently on the surface, and especially in this swimming cell.  
  
But even after all this time, instinct bade him retreat against the far side of the tub when Captain Snow knelt down next to it. He froze when he caught the man’s eye and yielded after another moment, permitting his touch even as every fibre of his body protested.  
Ramsay’s hand slid into the brackish water without hesitation, fingers gliding over grimy scales and soft spots where they had been torn out (here he liked to linger), playing with leathery fins that sprouted below sharp bones, and finally closing around the merman’s wrist.  
Theon resisted for the shortest of moments before what little strength he still possessed was overcome and his hand was drawn from the water. Now he turned his head away, unable to look at it, unable to accept what he’d become. The spindly digits were no longer connected by webbing, the skin between them cut and torn, so that his hands looked neither human nor like those of a merman, _the hands of a freak._  
 _You will never swim like one of your kind again_ , Ramsay had told him, told him often, whenever he took the knife to his skin, rendering his body useless inch by inch. _Reek_ he had named him when the wounds had begun to fester and smell like rotting fish, just _Reek_ , like he was nothing more than an exotic pet, a curiosity to sell in the nearest harbour town. And perhaps he was. The King Under-the-Sea was dead, and here he lay in his own filth, his only son and heir, and would never go among their kind again. Reek wept, unashamed, and his tears were white with salt.  
  
“I am not going to let you die,” Ramsay repeated, the familiar deranged smile lurking in the corners of his mouth when his pet looked up at him. “I need you to do me a favour.”  
Once upon a time he would have spat in his face, Reek thought, he would have hissed and cursed and lunged at him with teeth and claws. He would have struck him with his tail. Instead he looked up at him from dull eyes, uncomprehending, his fingers curling slightly when Ramsay caressed the scars between them.  
“The merpeople have taken the Isle of Cailin,” he continued, tracing a line up Reek’s arm and over his shoulder, until he found the sensitive gills, his touch barely ghosting over them as they opened and closed more quickly now. It was a threat nonetheless. He knew how to make himself heard. Reek nodded slowly.  
“They have claimed the bay, sinking any ships that come too close to the shore.” His smile widened while he rested his chin on the wall of the tub. “Fine warriors, you have to give them that. Quick as arrows. Oh, to be able to swim like a fish …”  
Theon wrapped his arms around himself, squeezing his own ribcage as though he could trap the sobs inside.  
Ramsay chuckled, but the smile did not quite reach his eyes, this time. “Of course, my father needs them gone. He means to keep half his fleet at anchor there. The island is a valuable position to hold in times of war, you see,” he explained, giving Reek a sympathetic look reserved for the hopelessly simple. It was met with another nod. Theon knew all about the Isle of Cailin; he remembered precisely the look on his father’s face as he had sent someone else to claim it for their people, someone else and not his son. Sometimes, Reek thought, sometimes it was good to be someone else.  
“And how can I help you, my lord?” His voice was hoarse with disuse, his throat so dry it hurt to speak. Reek dared not drink the filthy water from the tub; he had made himself ill that way once before, and the Captain had been far from pleased. It was best to keep him in good spirits.  
“It’s quite simple, my sweet Reek,” Ramsay said and took hold of his hand once more. His touch was gentle. _It bodes ill._ “But you will have to listen very well.”  
  
~~~  
  
The sky was beautiful, pink and red and very clear even as the darkness began to creep across its face from the east, seagulls shooting up amidst sprouting stars in a flurry of white and grey. Their voices were loud and drunk with celebration. The _Blood’s_ banners were flapping in the rising wind, the Flayed Man’s mournful face on every mast.  
They had put his tub on the main deck tonight, so he could see them. Theon had looked out across the bay all afternoon, until his eyes were dry and tired and the images engraved in his brain. _This is your work_ , he thought, and his useless hands curled into fists, itching and burning where they’d been stitched together with silk to disguise his state. _And he wants you to see it._  
  
Fish and bird alike had gathered for the feast, nibbling and tearing at the bodies that were drifting lazily among seaweed and wreckage, their skin white and cold and their bellies bloated with corpse-gas. Torn tails and scales and fins glittered on the dancing waves like flower crowns and garlands of purple and green, very nearly beautiful. What he wouldn’t have given to swim with them, blank eyes gazing up at the darkening sky.  
  
Theon barely flinched when a hand disturbed his water, cool and salty and crystal clear for the occasion. He wrenched his head away from the sea with some difficulty.  
Men were strange creatures indeed, he thought with a sense of detachment, as he found his visitor to be the Captain himself, clad in nothing but his own skin and the last of the sunlight, his body made of joints and muscles and threats.  
“You’ve done very well,” Ramsay said softly, giving him a grin too sharp-toothed to look quite human. The tub overflowed from their combined mass when he climbed into the cold water.  
Theon’s fingers gripped weakly at the wooden walls as he was pushed to the bottom and underwater, with Ramsay’s mouth on his gills, his hands in his hair and his legs wrapped around his tail, grinding their bodies together hard enough he might have made them merge. In the slick slippery cold it was hard to tell where his tail ended and Ramsay’s hips began, or if the coppery taste on his tongue as their lips and teeth clashed was his own blood.  
For the first time in his life, Theon thought he knew what it meant to drown.  


End file.
